Conventional central processing unit (CPU) architectures always require read and write accesses to register files (data storages, memories) for address or data processing. A register file write occurs even if there is an internal path configured to forward a result of a previous processing step. This write is required because the operand of the subsequent operation might not be known. Program execution might be interrupted by events or internal nodes needing the results of processing steps. This requires storing the results of data processing steps.
Some digital signal processor (DSP) architectures are configured to use arithmetic/logic unit (ALU) output data in further processing. This is generally limited to internal parallel processing and requires additional memory. All memory write and read accesses consume power which is generally undesirable for low power applications.